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Born 25 December 1834, Columbia County, Pennsylvania
The tie, exactly: settler of Harris Township in the Civil War's closing spring — with the year printed both ways. Howard's sketch, read first-hand, brings him in the spring of 1865, traveling with his sister Matilda to take charge of the farm of their widowed sister, Mrs. John Follmer. The 1875 atlas directory gives his year settled in the county as 1868. The sketch is the fuller and later account and the directory the nearer one; the file prints both and settles neither.
The course: Kownover was of the Dutch Kovenhoven line, born in Limestone Township, Columbia County, Pennsylvania, on 25 December 1834 to Richard and Katharine (Dye) Kownover. A pattern maker by first trade, he farmed for life thereafter. In the fall of 1877 he removed to a farm on the state line — forty-five acres in Ontwa Township, Cass County, Michigan, the rest in Section 7 of Harris — and he also owned 160 acres in Harris adjoining the village of Granger, so that his holding, like his life, straddled the line the CDP now crosses. He married Erepta Perkins on 5 December 1869 (she was born 28 January 1846, at South Bend); six children followed. He was a Methodist Episcopal trustee and class leader at Edwardsburg, a Prohibition party man, and a Mason of St. Peter's Lodge No. 106 at Edwardsburg, initiated 28 December 1865 — the lodge date standing, incidentally, as a third piece of evidence for the earlier arrival year, since a man is rarely initiated in a place he has not yet reached; the entry notes the inference as an inference and prints the conflict anyway.
Sources:
- Howard (1907), vol. 2, biographical sketches — the Kownover sketch whole.
- Illustrated Historical Atlas (1875), Harris patrons' directory, p. 103 — Kownover, Columbia County, settled 1868, as printed.